


Classic

by CrimeAlley1048



Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics), Robin (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-23 17:59:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19706557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrimeAlley1048/pseuds/CrimeAlley1048
Summary: There's been a murder! It's detective time.





	1. Mystery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The beginning

Tim sat up straighter on the couch, alerted by something that was less a sound and more a feeling that he wasn’t the only person in the room. He closed his laptop screen without bothering to look behind him. 

“Hey, Cass,” he said. 

“You’re improving.”

“Thanks. What’s up?”

Cass advanced into the room, out of uniform, with a mixing bowl in one hand and a manilla file folder in the other. She held out the file for Tim to take. 

“This.”

Tim took the file.

They settled cross-legged on the floor with the contents of the folder spread out on the hardwood, passing the bowl of Rice Krispie treats between them. Tim licked sugar off his fingers as he finished reading the last page of documents. 

“Alright,” he said. “Recap.”

Cass gestured for him to go on.

“Political candidate Lewis Montauk got shot twice in the head in his home on Monday night. He was from a rich family, but I guess he wasn’t rich enough to finance a gubernatorial campaign by himself.”

Cass nodded. “The donors.”

“Yeah. There were four other people in the house that night, starting with two political donors.” Tim leaned down to check the records. “Doctor Hubbard and Sam Hewitt. Both gave a lot of money to the campaign, and if you want my guess, Montauk was asking for more.”

Tim pointed to another stack of papers. “Also in the house? Montauk’s two adult daughters, Elizabeth and Amanda. Let’s make a timeline.”

Cass grabbed a pen and spread the empty file folder in front of her to take notes. 

Tim waited until she was ready, then began counting off times on his fingers. “The five of them started dinner at 8:30 PM. They talked about the campaign for an hour and a half, and then Elizabeth claims she went to bed at 10:00. The others didn’t see her again until after the murder.”

“Got it.”

“Around 10:15, Hewitt took his stuff and left— or at least, he says he did. The Doc and Amanda stayed in the dining room after that, while Montauk cleared the dishes and went to the kitchen.”

“Then?”

“At 10:22, Doctor Hubbard went down the hallway to the restroom. The Doc didn’t make it far because seconds after that, all three remaining witnesses heard two gunshots from the kitchen— and Hubbard heard a loud thump from somewhere in the house. At 10:23, Amanda passed the doctor in the hallway and found her father dead on the kitchen floor.” 

Cass grimaced. “Poor Amanda.”

“Unless she killed him.”

“Unless she killed him.”

“Were there any cameras around the house?”

“No.”

“The crime scene?”

Cass took another clump of Rice Krispie treat. “They took the body. Everything else is there.”

“Ballistics report?”

“Nine mils. Short range.” 

“Hm.” Tim held out a hand for the bowl. “Did I miss anything?”

Cass passed it over. “The doors.”

“Oh yeah. All the doors to the house were locked.” Tim grinned. “It’s kind of a classic.”

“And I believe,” said Alfred from the doorway, “there’s a classic answer.”

Tim turned to face him. Alfred had a mop, a bucket, and a wry smile. 

“The butler did it?” Tim guessed.

“The butler does in fact do everything,” Alfred agreed. “Especially around here.”

“Thanks.”

“Your laundry is ready, Master Tim. And Miss Cassandra, the bloodstains have been removed from your carpet.”

Cass blew Alfred a kiss and stole back the Rice Krispie bowl. She and Tim bent over the file again while Alfred continued down the hallway. 

Tim took the folder, looked over the timeline, and began a new column: suspects. 

“So,” he said. “Four suspects that we know about: Hewitt, Hubbard, Elizabeth, and Amanda. At the time of the murder, all four claim they were in different parts of the house.”

Tim tapped his pen against the floorboards, thinking. “Elizabeth says she was upstairs in bed. Amanda says alone in the dining room. Hewitt says on the road home, Hubbard says in the hallway. The murder happened in the kitchen. Who’s lying?”

“Or?”

“Or,” Tim conceded, “someone was in the house that we don’t know about. There might have been an intruder, or a team of intruders. We can’t rule that out.”

Cass nodded meditatively, pulling out another handful of Rice Krispie. She set aside the bowl. 

“But why?”

“Good question: motive. We can start with the twin daughters, I guess. It’s a rich family. One or both of them could have murdered their father for the inheritance. Hey, Bruce.”

Bruce had wandered into the room in his pajamas and robe, yawning. His eyes narrowed.

“You’re doing what now?”

“Nothing,” said Tim, smiling innocently. “Don’t worry about it.”

Bruce grinned, stole the bowl of Rice Krispie treats, and walked through the door on the other side of the room. 

“Hey!” Tim protested. 

“Aw,” said Cass. She made a face and crossed her arms in mock anger before she went back to business. “What about the donors?”

“I don’t know. They already spent a lot of money on this campaign. I don’t see what either one of them has to gain from his death, so why kill?”

“To kill,” Cass said quietly. 

They both sat on that one for a few moments. 

“Yeah,” said Tim. “Maybe. We’ll keep that in mind.”

\---------------------------

They changed into their costumes and drove further into the countryside beyond Gotham City. The Montauk house wasn’t far from Wayne Manor— down a few extra miles of road, past a single stoplight, over a rusted iron bridge, and through a forest.

In the end, they found it by the swarm of police officers going in and out. Tim grabbed the case file from the backseat, and the two of them went inside to mingled smiles and glares. Some officers, it appeared, weren’t keen on bats. 

They passed from the front entrance into a large foyer, and from there into a long hallway with assorted doors. Tim opened all of them on his way past: a living room and kitchen on the right, a dining room and bathroom on the left. The two of them peered into each space, looking for clues. 

They began their investigation in the dining room. A long table with five place settings sat in the center of the room, half cleared of plates and serving dishes. One heavy wooden chair lay sideways on the floor, as if someone had knocked it over in a rush to stand. 

“That’ll be the thumping sound,” said Tim, pointing. “The one the doctor heard after the gunshots? The falling chair does place Amanda in this room at the time of the murder. Seems like she’s not our shooter.”

Tim put an X next to Amanda’s name and moved on; he pulled Elizabeth’s witness statement from the file and spread the pages on the table to read for a second time. 

“I don’t think it’s her,” said Cass, tapping the corner of a page. “I saw this interview.”

“Was she lying?”

“No. She was angry.”

“You’re sure?”

“Sure enough.”

“Okay.” Tim gathered the papers back up again, pausing over the last paragraph of Elizabeth’s statement: ‘when I catch the barn-rat bastard who did this, I’ll commit a murder myself.’

“Angry,” Tim agreed. “So. Not the twins?” He marked another X, this time by Elizabeth’s name.

“No.” Cass circled the room for a final time, then led the way back into the hall. “Not the twins.”

They stopped a few feet down the hallway, between two doors: dining room and bathroom— the place where Doctor Hubbard claimed to be at the time of the murder. The kitchen door wasn’t far from the spot. 

“The Doc was close,” Tim noted. “The closest to the murder. Amanda says she saw Hubbard in this hallway right after the gunshots, and if we believe Amanda…”

“It could have been the doctor.”

“Yeah. Hubbard might have fired the shots, then retreated back here. It would only take a few steps. Let’s look at the kitchen.” They squeezed past a pair of passing officers and through the kitchen door. 

\---------------------------

There was a lot of blood in the kitchen: a congealing pool of it on the floor and splatter marks on the backsplash and cabinets. There was a stack of plates and pans piled haphazardly in the sink next to a heap of silverware on the kitchen counter— the missing dishes from the dining room set. Tim and Cass stood in the middle of the tile, overlooking the blood. 

Tim never got used to murder scenes. He pushed back a wave of nausea and the urge to sit down on the floor. Instead, he turned slowly around the room, taking in details. 

“Well,” he said finally. “We know the killer was here. The question is, how did the killer get out? Amanda didn’t see anyone when she found the body— no one but the doctor in the hallway. As I see it, there are two options.”

Tim held up a finger. “One: the doctor killed Montauk, then left the room before Amanda arrived.”

He held up a second finger. “Two: the killer— not the doctor— was still in this room, hiding, when Amanda arrived. They waited until everyone else was gone, then left.”

Cass nodded.

“I don’t see many places in here where someone could hide. You take the right side, I’ll take the left?”

They searched quietly for a few minutes; Tim opened cabinets while Cass meticulously combed her side of the room. 

“Here,” she said. 

She closed the door, revealing the space behind it. There were two tiny smudges of red on the wall near the hinges— blood splatters where no blood should be. She pulled a vial from her belt to take a sample.

“Perfect,” said Tim. “The killer hid behind the door until everyone left. That means it wasn’t the doctor.”

He marked a third X by Hubbard’s name. “Once again, two options. Hewitt never left the house—”

“Or someone else was here.”

“Yeah. My money’s on Hewitt.”

“Why?”

Tim shrugged. “More exciting. It would be very… classic. Either way, the killer snuck out of here without anyone else seeing them. How many ways could you get out of this house?”

Cass appeared to think about it. “Four.”

“How many ways could, you know, not you get out of this house?”

Cass thought some more. 

“One,” she decided.


	2. Solution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end

The bathroom had a tiny window covered by a miniature curtain rod and floral-patterned fabric. Tim looked over the bolt and found it unlocked. 

“You were right,” he said. “The killer left through here.”

They dusted for fingerprints and found nothing. They combed the bathroom too— nothing. As a last resort, they walked outside, to the other side of the window, expecting nothing. Instead, they found a thin, barely visible streak of gray running vertical beneath the window. 

“Shoe mark,” said Tim, carefully chipping away a section of the brickwork along the line of rubber. “The killer left it climbing through the window. That gives us two samples to work with. What do you think?”

“The blood?”

“Probably Montauk’s, but maybe we’ll get lucky. It could be the killer’s. And the shoe mark—”

“Will show us where the killer’s been.” Cass gestured back to the Montauk house. “Are we done here?”

“I think so.” Tim stowed his sample safely in his belt. “Let’s go home.”

\-----------------------

They passed Bruce again on their way into the Batcave— them arriving, him leaving. He waved at them from the driver’s seat of the Batmobile before he sped off into the cave system. Tim and Cass set up camp in the crime lab. 

Their first sample came back quickly, about as Tim expected. 

“No dice on the blood,” he said, holding up the comparison sheet. “It’s Montauk’s, not his murderer’s. Maybe we’ll have better luck with the shoe.” 

They waited. The second set of tests— the shoe print on the brickwork— came back positive for rubber, dirt, and rusted iron. 

Rubber, Tim thought, obviously. The print came from the toe of a shoe. The dirt was obvious too, if unhelpful. There was nothing special about it. 

Rusted iron? More interesting. There might be a way to track that, but how? Gotham City was old, full of rusted iron: buildings, sewer pipes, railings….

Bridges. Tim looked up as Cass arrived at the same conclusion and they spoke in near unison. 

“The bridge.” 

They had crossed a bridge on their way to the Montauk house, rusted and peeling. 

“The stoplight was right there.” Tim grabbed excitedly for the computer mouse and opened the traffic cam database. “There might be video.”

They found the stoplight camera easily enough, and they watched the film for the day sped up— hours of footage into minutes. When the timestamp hit 9:32 PM, a shadowy figure passed over the bridge, face invisible under a hood to the grainy camera. 

“Got em,” Tim said, pausing the video. “Sort of. No face to run through the system.”

Cass played back the video several times, leaning into the screen. Tim watched as she rolled back the seconds again and again. The figure walked across the bridge and into the shadows outside of the camera’s range. As far as Tim could tell, there was nothing else to see. 

“Do you have something?”

Cass ran the loop a final time, then leaned back in her chair. 

“I know that walk,” she said. “I’ve seen it before.”

“When?”

“Two weeks ago.” She opened another folder of footage: her own cowl-cam. She scrolled back two weeks and selected a file. 

The screen lit up with Cass’s point of view. It panned over an empty rooftop, then over the edge of the roof, looking down on a pair of men under a street lamp. One stood silently near the pole, clutching a gun. The other paced backwards and forwards, in and out of the shadows. 

“That one,” said Cass, pointing.

The camera spun in a dizzying blur, presumably as the Cass of two weeks ago dropped to the ground between the two men. Both turned to face her. 

Tim paused the video on a perfect shot of the pacing man’s face. 

Excellent. The facial recognition system whirled through photographs and text. In the end, a mug shot appeared on the screen.

“Philip Rik,” read Tim. “Well. I guess Hewitt isn’t our man.”

“You’re disappointed.”

“It would have been cool. It doesn’t matter, I guess. An intruder is classic too.” Tim printed off the mugshot and tucked it into his file. “So you fought him two weeks ago? What happened?”

Cass shrugged. “He was working for Penguin. They arrested him. That’s all I know.”

“Do you think Penguin is behind the Montauk shooting?”

“Hm.” Cass scrolled through Rik’s police record. She pointed to a list of names. 

“He works for everyone,” she said. 

Tim knew the type. Mercenary. Paid gun. Henchman for hire. He copied down the long list of Rik’s employers: Penguin, Riddler, Joker, Black Mask… 

That wasn’t even half of it. Tim finished his list while Cass kept scrolling to the address typed at the bottom of Rik’s sheet. Tim copied that down too.

“Alright,” he said. “Let’s go.” 

\-----------------------

They found him, but not in time. When they arrived at the address from the police sheet, they saw a small, battered looking shotgun house with a single door. That door was in splinters. It hung off its hinges and creaked quietly in the wind. 

They advanced towards the house together, silent and unseen. Tim stepped across the threshold first. He had some idea of what he was about to see. 

Murder scenes. After all these years, they still made him sick. 

Rik lay on his living room floor with two bullets in his head, blood pooling around him. By Tim’s judgment, he had been dead for hours. His skin was bloodless, his body stiff.

They retreated to the doorway to discuss their options. 

“I’m thinking his employer killed him,” said Tim. “That seems like the obvious answer.”

“Yes.”

“But who?”

Cass shook her head. Tim opened his file again.

“It’s a murder mystery. We have to at least consider Riddler. Other than that, I don’t know. Montauk was a politician. Maybe he made campaign promises the crime bosses didn’t like. Then it could be Penguin or Black Mask.”

He ran his pen down the list of employers. 

Penguin, Riddler, Joker, Black Mask…

Oh. 

Tim closed his folder. Oh. How had he not seen that before?

“Two bullets,” he said, gesturing to Rik’s body. “Two murders, two donors, two sisters.”

“Twins,” Cass pointed out. 

“Yeah,” Tim sighed. “Twins. And it happened on—”

“Monday.”

“The second day of the week, at—”

“10:22.” 

Tim glanced down at his own watch, set to military time. By that system, 10:22 PM would be….

“22:22.” Tim switched on his com link. “Commissioner? We solved the Montauk case. There’s been another murder, and we know who did it.”

“Two-Face,” said Cass.

“Two-Face,” Tim agreed. 

\-----------------------

Tim knew— really, he did— that super villains didn’t stay in jail. Arkham Asylum had all the holding power of torn sleeves or a broken strainer: holes within holes. 

Still. There was something cathartic in watching an arrest. 

Tim and Cass sat on the hood of their car while the cops dragged Two-Face out of his favorite club. He hadn’t been hard to find. Dent screamed furiously from the minute the sirens started to the moment they loaded him into the van. 

Cass waved at him. He spat in her direction. 

“Twos,” said Tim. He still couldn’t believe he missed it for so long. “Two-Face. Of course it was Two-Face. He works in pairs.”

“So do we.” Cass gestured between the two of them, and Tim heard the smile in her voice. 

“Yeah. I guess so.” 

They waited for the last officer to leave, then drove away themselves— across the city, down into the cave system, and towards home.


End file.
